Our group got Lethal Company - and promptly refunded, none of us really felt it. Later “Content Warning” was given free, which we got and still occasionally play, it’s okay - if a bit jank. We’ve been discussing about this one, but it just screams streamer/youtuber-bait to me, and while it is exceptionally fun to watch good streamers having a banter and laughs. I dunno if it holds as well for us, it kinda feels like we’d play it once or twice and then drop it entirely.
Visually the game is on point, though. The southpark-esque “canadian” way the robot-characters talk is hilarious, and the slight eye movements really sell it.
oh I wasn’t going to go on a rampage about fake pixels or anything, honest question about performance. Kinda wild it tanks that hard beyond 1440p. There’s few games where I run DLSS even if performance-wise it isn’t neede - just because it does better job with antialiasing than whatever TXAA/TAA/FXAA/whatever postprocess AA there usually is. A lot less crawling pixel edges in fine details etc.
Also, just heads up if you ever intend to go for Arkham Knight - IIRC the good ending requires finishing all joker stuff (incl. the collectible trophies). I got no time for that nonsense so just watched the ending on youtube after getting bad ending. :D
Arkham City is great! Plays well, sounds dope, looks still pretty darn good. The artstyle is still a nice balance between realistic and stylistic, which doesn’t age as hard as realistic, imo.
Got to ask, FSR really needed? Shouldn’t this run at 4k even at fairly modest/toaster-ish pc now? Or does FSR provide better antialiasing results than whatever the game does without it?
Once upon a time I did 100%'d Arkham Asylum, but bailed out of that plan on Arkham City - the amount of collectibles, challenges and secrets was just too much. (And then Arkham Knight came along and turned it way past 11, didn’t bother to finish the game because screw those Joker races.)
the character models were as weird looking as you’d expect from the era
Oh sure! Love the lowpoly/pre-rendered backgrounds aesthetic. The aliasing thing I mentioned earlier is just a “petpeeve” of mine, I can’t stand the jagged edges / lack of antialiasing. The rough pixel edges of the modes look so out of place when the pre-rendered backgrounds are so smoothly antialiased.
Though, there’s an argument to be made that when playing in modern high resolution, the character models are a lot sharper than the upscaled/blurry backgrounds :D
Some of the puzzles are obtuse to the extreme, and silly. There’s one that’s almost legendarily bad, so it has that bit of history if you’re interested lol.
I guess same goes for pretty much every point&click adventure game, sometimes you just need to be in the same “headspace” as the puzzle designer to get it, otherwise you just don’t.
But, sure I’m down for some history of a bad puzzle! I love obscure tidbits of old games.
oh man, The Longest Journey has been on my todo list for eternities. Ages ago I was being a pixel-peeping-perfectionist and I hated the aliasing on the character models - but now that ScummVM does the game perfectly I really have no reason to wait… but… here we are.
Since the game is dear to you, how about some motivational sales pitch for it? Why should I drop everything else and go play the game right now? :D
same deal, favorites change according to mood, but there are overall few mainstays:
Indiana Jones & The Fate of Atlantis.
It’s a childhood favorite I return to every now and then. It’s a point&click adventure, and to me it’s essentially the 4th (and last) Indiana Jones movie. :D
Apart from one or two bad bits the game pulls, it’s otherwise pretty logical from start to finish. 3 different paths from mid to late game, and mostly good voice acting (for the time). I know the game by heart at this point, but still it feels fun to play, every time. Nostalgia-goggles probably play a big part.
:::spoiler kinda spoilery descriptions of said bad bits
there’s a “puzzle” where you need to go back and forth trading items between 2 characters, until eventually some hint from the recipient drops. Not hard, just… tedious.
the hot air balloon controls are bad. Not impossible to use, but just imprecise for no real gameplay reason.
if you didn’t LOOK at one specific Atlantean cupboard’s door, you have no clue how to solve a later puzzle. Though, you can return to the cupboard, but nothing hints there being instructions for the later puzzle on it. :::
Cyberpunk 2077
I know it’s a divisive game, don’t care, works for me. The bleak vibes of the game just speak to me. Have played it through several times since launch, occasionally still find new things here and there. Not the deepest rpg around, but a good action-rpg with neonlights.
Unnamed Space Idle
I’ve been on this idle/timewaster for way over a year, slow progress raising the numbers all the time. Sure it’s a bit low on gameplay, but absolutely neat little game to occasionally click few times when watching some longform content or so.
The main idea is that Styx is smaller than humans, so direct combat is never an option. Stealth takedowns, traps and such are the tools here. The enemies are delightfully stupid: sure, once you’ve been spotted they give you a chase and smack you about, but they also go back to their patrols if you manage to escape and hide for a bit. The usual “huh, must have been the wind” thing.
Gameplay can be a bit quicksave/quickload if that’s how you want to play it. Levels are generally huge, but end up somewhat being obstacle courses with few routes which zigzag around the direct path through them.
The games are a bit “eurojank”, sure, but imo, very enjoyable. But I am the kind of gamer who takes hours per level just so they can knock out EVERYBODY in the level, without raising alarms, just because that’s fun to me, so I might be a bit biased. :P
All in all, since you already got them, give them a whirl? The first levels tell you pretty fast if you like the gameplay or not.
Well, it’s a gametype/genre I tend to enjoy greatly - so I can probably overlook quite a bit of jank/issues/whatevs and still get some enjoyment out of it. First round was the “blind go”, second round I wanted to see what can be done differently and what kinds of different outcomes there are. IIRC not much changes when doing stuff differently. Admittedly the second round around was bit of a slog - I think I played it through, but not 100% of it.
To me the “okay” means more of a “more fun than not”. The game isn’t great by any means, but it’s not also off-putting to play, but I don’t feel like I need to re-install the game ever again. Also, the game isn’t terribly long either.
I thought it was okay, though not without it’s issues. The itemization (everything being “standard -> better -> betterer -> best”) and the size of the playable areas were kinda weak.
IIRC Finished the main game twice, couldn’t be arsed with the dlc though.